No, he's right here on 'Cries and Whispers'. My humble blog has been visited by none other than David Lee King, the Library 2.0 blogger first noticed below. He posted a comment on this post, and was nice enough not to take offense at my sceptical comments on one aspect of his blog. (Uh, Dave, you were kidding about "Kill the unbeliever", right?)
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Black power
Here's a customized version of Google, called Blackle. By using a black screen instead of the blinding white of ordinary Google, it supposedly saves energy which would otherwise be carbonating our troposphere and giving polar bears heatstroke. And if you believe that, there's a bridge in Sydney I can let you have cheap.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Hold your fire!
What have I done? My innocent post on Harry Potter has released a hornet's nest. Library bloggers are conducting a vicious battle royal in my comments column. It wasn't meant to be like this. I hoped that where there was war, my blog would bring peace; where there was hate, my blog would bring love. Now cut it out, you kids! Yeah, it's fun until someone's eye gets put out with a quidditch-stick...or a sniggle-snoggle..or (insert your own Rowlingism here).
Let's forget our differences and combine against the real enemy...Library 2.0!
Update: some wise words of warning from Marian Paroo in the comments to this post. At first I thought I would be safe if I just stayed away from making snide cracks about Library blogs with pictures of cats. I wish! I just had to go and stomp on the toes of the Harry Potterers, and now the Web 2.0 zealots. Excuse me, but I think I hear an angry mob outside my window. Pitchforks? Check. Flaming torches? Check.
But seriously, I am somehow not surprised to hear Marian's report from the Library 2.0 flame wars. I can see how easily the barely concealed fervour in even rational-seeming types like David Lee King could turn into "Kill the unbeliever!!"
Let's forget our differences and combine against the real enemy...Library 2.0!
Update: some wise words of warning from Marian Paroo in the comments to this post. At first I thought I would be safe if I just stayed away from making snide cracks about Library blogs with pictures of cats. I wish! I just had to go and stomp on the toes of the Harry Potterers, and now the Web 2.0 zealots. Excuse me, but I think I hear an angry mob outside my window. Pitchforks? Check. Flaming torches? Check.
But seriously, I am somehow not surprised to hear Marian's report from the Library 2.0 flame wars. I can see how easily the barely concealed fervour in even rational-seeming types like David Lee King could turn into "Kill the unbeliever!!"
Monday, July 23, 2007
Because it's there!
This week's learning assignment is RSS feeds. I seem to have got the hang of it, but again, I can't see it having much use for me. I read about 4-5 blogs on a daily basis, and most of these update fairly infrequently, so RSS feeds aren't much help to me. I worry about the librarian who tells us she follows 80 blogs a day. What would you say to someone who told you she washes her hands 80 times a day? My response: Get. Help.
I don't care who they are: nobody needs to read 80 blogs a day. Even I can easily spend 40 minutes reading my favourite blogs, and though I enjoy it, I always come away with the slightly seedy sense of having wasted time. Just as if I'd been playing a computer game, or...reading Harry Potter.
I came across David Lee King's blog, which is steeped in the 2.0 mantras, but still manages to be interesting. David seems to belong to the 'because it's there' school of thought on Libraries and Web 2.0. Why do librarians need to know about Web 2.0? Because it's there! Pragmatic, functional justifications for particular applications seem to be in short supply. Increasingly, this is my Canute-like critique of the whole Library 2.0 project. The idea seems to be to grab each new thing - wikis, RSS feeds, blogs - and then try to find a reason why libraries need it. It ends up sounding a little desperate.
I don't care who they are: nobody needs to read 80 blogs a day. Even I can easily spend 40 minutes reading my favourite blogs, and though I enjoy it, I always come away with the slightly seedy sense of having wasted time. Just as if I'd been playing a computer game, or...reading Harry Potter.
I came across David Lee King's blog, which is steeped in the 2.0 mantras, but still manages to be interesting. David seems to belong to the 'because it's there' school of thought on Libraries and Web 2.0. Why do librarians need to know about Web 2.0? Because it's there! Pragmatic, functional justifications for particular applications seem to be in short supply. Increasingly, this is my Canute-like critique of the whole Library 2.0 project. The idea seems to be to grab each new thing - wikis, RSS feeds, blogs - and then try to find a reason why libraries need it. It ends up sounding a little desperate.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
The rise of the Millennials
We've been hearing a lot about millennials at the Library lately. In a recent library forum, I found myself, and most of my colleagues, neatly boxed up as soon-to-retire 'boomers' by a self-proclaimed millennial.
Since the world is their oyster, the big question seems to be how to attract the Millennials into librarianship? Gee, I dunno, maybe..we could..pay them to work here. That's what got me in. So what remains for me, as a boomer librarian (on the cusp)? Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll get the deluxe euthanasia package, with a complimentary soylent green mint on my pillow. (Apologies to any Millennials who might be reading: 'soylent green' is a reference to a pop culture artefact from the late Twentieth Century. For more information, consult a talking ring in your crumbling and vine-overgrown public library, take a left at the Forbidden Zone. Oops, sorry, another of those references.)
Harry Potter sells out
Here's my transparent ploy for topicality: a post about Harry Potter. I was travelling on Saturday morning and seemed to see people everywhere clutching the new volume. As I passed my local bookstore - all done out with Potter-themed curtains and faux-gothic front - I overheard a harassed mother with two kids in tow wailing "They've sold out!" At the risk of making myself even more unpopular, I have to confess to being one of those people who is depressed by the sight of an adult reading a Harry Potter book. Should I go further and say how surprised I am to see many librarians reading Harry Potter?
When I was a child, I read as a child, but I wanted to grow up and read grown up books. I thought my older brother's copy of To Kill a Mockingbird was a fascinating object, and, in typical fraternal spite, he hid it from me in a pile of old washing that sat on the defunct copper* in our washhouse. (This pile of washing, though perfectly clean, was never disturbed by my mother, and seemed to have no real function in our household.) It was a good place to hide a book, but not good enough. I found Mockingbird, and read it over a period of days, in short standing snatches, when my brother was out of the way. This was probably the most intense reading experience of my life.
So to see people reading Harry Potter when they could be reading D. H. Lawrence or Henry James or Vladimir Nabokov or Anthony Burgess seems to me almost a treason against one of the few compensations we have for leaving childhood behind.
The Potter phenomenon reminds me of one of my favourite childhood books, John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, similarly a tale of a young boy's adventure in a world of magic, written long before J. K. Rowling was even a single mother. I recently found and bought a copy, hoping to revisit this world, but funnily enough it has sat on my shelf for nearly a year now, and its prospects of being read seem slim.
(Incidentally, here's an interesting article on the economics of the world of Harry Potter. )
*note for younger readers: a 'copper' was a large copper basin heated by a wood fire, in which the hot water for the laundry was prepared, back in the ye olde dayes.
Update: Huginn, who seems never to sleep, and who has more eyes than Argus, defends the Potter-readers, bringing no less a witness than C. S. Lewis. In my own defence, I can only plead the virtue of inconsistency. I did mention buying The Midnight Folk, with the intention of revisiting it as an adult. Some of my real cultural treasures are things that fall into that area of works created by adults for adults, over the heads of children - such as Looney Tunes cartoons, and the Donald Duck comics of Carl Barks. My concerns about the Harry Potter books go to a question I am unable to answer (not having read them), and have seldom if ever heard raised: are they any good as literature? To put it another way: how do the Potter books compare as literature to the Narnia books? Put yet another way, if the first Potter book had been released as a book for adult readers, would it have succeeded?
When I was a child, I read as a child, but I wanted to grow up and read grown up books. I thought my older brother's copy of To Kill a Mockingbird was a fascinating object, and, in typical fraternal spite, he hid it from me in a pile of old washing that sat on the defunct copper* in our washhouse. (This pile of washing, though perfectly clean, was never disturbed by my mother, and seemed to have no real function in our household.) It was a good place to hide a book, but not good enough. I found Mockingbird, and read it over a period of days, in short standing snatches, when my brother was out of the way. This was probably the most intense reading experience of my life.
So to see people reading Harry Potter when they could be reading D. H. Lawrence or Henry James or Vladimir Nabokov or Anthony Burgess seems to me almost a treason against one of the few compensations we have for leaving childhood behind.
The Potter phenomenon reminds me of one of my favourite childhood books, John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, similarly a tale of a young boy's adventure in a world of magic, written long before J. K. Rowling was even a single mother. I recently found and bought a copy, hoping to revisit this world, but funnily enough it has sat on my shelf for nearly a year now, and its prospects of being read seem slim.
(Incidentally, here's an interesting article on the economics of the world of Harry Potter. )
*note for younger readers: a 'copper' was a large copper basin heated by a wood fire, in which the hot water for the laundry was prepared, back in the ye olde dayes.
Update: Huginn, who seems never to sleep, and who has more eyes than Argus, defends the Potter-readers, bringing no less a witness than C. S. Lewis. In my own defence, I can only plead the virtue of inconsistency. I did mention buying The Midnight Folk, with the intention of revisiting it as an adult. Some of my real cultural treasures are things that fall into that area of works created by adults for adults, over the heads of children - such as Looney Tunes cartoons, and the Donald Duck comics of Carl Barks. My concerns about the Harry Potter books go to a question I am unable to answer (not having read them), and have seldom if ever heard raised: are they any good as literature? To put it another way: how do the Potter books compare as literature to the Narnia books? Put yet another way, if the first Potter book had been released as a book for adult readers, would it have succeeded?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Fractured Flickr
I have a confession to make to my readers - both of you. This week's Learning 2.0 is about Flickr, something I had already made a brief reconnaissance of. Dutifully, I turned to Flickr again, found out what a mashup is, etc. Am I missing something? Am I the only person on the planet who finds Flickr stupendously boring? Why would I want to look at photographs by amateurs? Who breaks into other people's houses in order to look at their photo albums?
OK, I resolve to try a little harder. Let me use my searching skills to find someone who can tell me why librarians should care about Flickr. I come up with something like this. Read it very carefully. Despite its hyperventilating title "Why Flickr is so great for libraries", there is nothing there.
I don't lie awake at night, tossing and turning, thinking "Oh, if only someone would invent something that allows me to post and share images to the Internet - it would revolutionize my work at the Library!!"
And the 'Librarian trading cards' are deeply sad. Sad, sad, sad.
OK, I resolve to try a little harder. Let me use my searching skills to find someone who can tell me why librarians should care about Flickr. I come up with something like this. Read it very carefully. Despite its hyperventilating title "Why Flickr is so great for libraries", there is nothing there.
I don't lie awake at night, tossing and turning, thinking "Oh, if only someone would invent something that allows me to post and share images to the Internet - it would revolutionize my work at the Library!!"
And the 'Librarian trading cards' are deeply sad. Sad, sad, sad.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
'Forever minus one day'
Librarians with an interest in copyright - and hey, isn't that all of us? - might be interested in this. A super-brainy maths-type guy at Cambridge has made a study which attempts to quantify the competing interests in copyright, in order to calculate the optimum period of copyright. Care to guess? His answer is fourteen years. Sounds good to me, but I suspect Mickey Mouse's lawyers might have a different idea. Speaking of Mickey and his lawyers, that reminds me of the joke about Mickey's divorce, but it's a bit too 'blue' to repeat, even on a library blog.
No place like House
Now, I hear you asking 'Who is this amazing new mystery man who's setting the world of Library blogging on fire? Why does he hide behind the ludicrous pseudonym "Gerard"? What's his drink? What's his favourite TV show?'
Wonder no longer. My one must-see on free-to-air is the medical drama House MD. I could go on and on about why this is such a good show, but I'll try to narrow it down. (Don't worry: I'm blogging this on my own time.)
1. Hugh Laurie. In one of the best bits of counter-intuitive casting in TV history, an English comic actor is cast as an American doctor in a drama, and it works beautifully. Laurie is just such a watchable actor: the show has learned to do these moody closeups of his face with chiaroscuro lighting, and Laurie is one of those actors who can suggest an interior life, and the process of thought. Especially against some of his co-stars who are cute, perky and chipper, and about as deep as a snowflake.
2. Sarcasm. House's character as a sarcastic ogre with no time for pleasantries, evasions or even ordinary courtesy allows the show to subvert all kinds of anti-rational pieties. It's surprising how often the show comes out with what are effectively conservative opinions: a recent episode was emphatic in dismissing the existence of Gulf War Syndrome.
3. Sleaze. Another of the pleasant subversions of this show is that, even though we know House has a heart as big as all outdoors under that rumpled t-shirt, he isn't made into a saint. It has been established that he regularly pays for sex and is not averse to pornography, and the show gets considerable comic mileage out of this.
Just as CSI has been franchised from Vegas to New York and Miami, maybe the House idea could be franchised to a library setting. Let's see: a brilliant, abrasive and iconoclastic research librarian, equally dismissive of his clients and his well-meaning but bumbling colleagues. He could be based in..oh, I don't know..say, a Picture collection. But where to find the model for such a character...where?...
Wonder no longer. My one must-see on free-to-air is the medical drama House MD. I could go on and on about why this is such a good show, but I'll try to narrow it down. (Don't worry: I'm blogging this on my own time.)
1. Hugh Laurie. In one of the best bits of counter-intuitive casting in TV history, an English comic actor is cast as an American doctor in a drama, and it works beautifully. Laurie is just such a watchable actor: the show has learned to do these moody closeups of his face with chiaroscuro lighting, and Laurie is one of those actors who can suggest an interior life, and the process of thought. Especially against some of his co-stars who are cute, perky and chipper, and about as deep as a snowflake.
2. Sarcasm. House's character as a sarcastic ogre with no time for pleasantries, evasions or even ordinary courtesy allows the show to subvert all kinds of anti-rational pieties. It's surprising how often the show comes out with what are effectively conservative opinions: a recent episode was emphatic in dismissing the existence of Gulf War Syndrome.
3. Sleaze. Another of the pleasant subversions of this show is that, even though we know House has a heart as big as all outdoors under that rumpled t-shirt, he isn't made into a saint. It has been established that he regularly pays for sex and is not averse to pornography, and the show gets considerable comic mileage out of this.
Just as CSI has been franchised from Vegas to New York and Miami, maybe the House idea could be franchised to a library setting. Let's see: a brilliant, abrasive and iconoclastic research librarian, equally dismissive of his clients and his well-meaning but bumbling colleagues. He could be based in..oh, I don't know..say, a Picture collection. But where to find the model for such a character...where?...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Title of this blog
Filmbuffs amongst you will recognise this as the title of a 1972 movie by Ingmar Bergman. Its actual title is Viskningar och rop but somehow that didn't seem such a good idea for a blog name. But who knows, I might have made lots of new friends in the Swedish library community. Hmm. Your Library Learning 2.0 assignment for today is to google the term "swedish librarians". Go on, I dare you.
First Post
Yes, that's right, the Victorian taxpayer is now supporting my blog habit. I was going to say something snarky about librarians' blogs with pictures of cats, but then I looked at some of the others in this project and decided it was better to keep my smart comments to myself. But really, if you've looked at a few librarian blogs, as I have, you have to ask, 'What is it with the cats, already?'
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